Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
There was no resumption of the evenings in front of the fire in Harry’s room.
For one thing, Harry said, the evenings were getting warmer, no need for fires.
Harry went back to her aerie after dinner.
She kept their walks short. It was, she explained, how she might undertake his calculus lessons and still devote sufficient time to her proof.
She said she was sure the minds of the Continent were burning the midnight oil in the race to prove the conjecture and she must do no less.
Thomas found it very difficult that those pleasant evenings of poetry had been replaced by mornings of symbols and numbers and feeling stupid while his brain ached from exertion.
And Harry did not ask to sit in his lap any longer. He found that difficult, too.
For his part, Thomas did not touch her. His desire to do so was ever-present.
The memory of her body that night in her bedchamber would linger in his mind, taunting him.
The softness of her skin. The feel of her breasts in his hands and in his mouth.
Her smell. Her most private taste. Her exquisite responsiveness to his touch.
Surely, that was the memory he dwelled on the most—how she had wanted something from him, something he had been uniquely positioned to give her.
The bandaged right hand was more than an admonition.
It was a token of his brutishness. A sign of how a selfish oaf might, without thinking, crush something rare and delicate with his appetites.
It was what had haunted his entire adult life—that he, like his cousin Mr. Hugh Drake, would take something beautiful and destroy it.
Like his sister Jane had been destroyed.
And yet Harry had such resiliency. He wondered at how, the morning after he had injured her, she had treated him with the most affection she had ever shown him. She had been such a woman with him. She had been almost wifely.
She had called him Tommy.
She had worried about his feet.
She had tried to shield him from knowing what he had done.
But now, no longer. His anger at her, his abandoning her for London and his whores had been a tipping point in some way that his drunken behavior had not been. A point of inflection, Harry might call it. And he had fumbled it, disastrously.
It did not matter he had not bedded another woman that night. He had planned to, and she knew it. And he could not find a way to tell her he had not. Harry did not want to hear about what he did or did not do with his cock.
And it would rip his heart in two right now to know she did not care one way or another what he felt for her.
He had no idea how to return them to their former intimacy, and he did not feel he could be the one to do so.
At every stage of their friendship, from her proposal of an unconventional marriage to her putting his hand between her legs, it had been Harry and Harry’s desires that had led the way.
He assumed—no, he knew—it must be Harry who took the next step.
She must choose him.
So he did nothing. He did not reach for her. He did not ask her for anything. He suppressed his impatience and studied the calculus and waited for her.
“Harry, do you ever wish you could change something in the past?”
“No.”
They were walking on a path through a meadow.
“You have lived a life without regret, then?”
“No. I regret I have eaten so much that now, like most other women, I have to wear a corset to support my breasts.” Harry laughed and looked down.
Thomas allowed himself a glance. He immediately wished he hadn’t.
His look at the beautiful rounding of her bosom, the creamy skin at the tops of her breasts prompted longing and memories of holding those breasts, caressing the nipples he could no longer see.
He felt an ache deep in his groin. And one in his chest. He almost groaned.
Harry went on, “But I think other people attach more importance to the past than I do. Regret is foolish. And it is easy. Because you know you cannot change the past. How much more difficult it is to wish to change the present and, hence, the future. Because the wish demands action.”
“Yes.”
“I rather like the present. Or at least I am fond of this one.”
“I’m glad.”
They walked on, Thomas hoping he played some small part in her fondness for the present.
Finally, he said, “For my part, there are many things I wish I could change.”
“About the past?”
“Yes.”
“There are things I wish to change . . .” Harry seemed far away.
“Yes?” Thomas said hopefully.
She squinted. “But none of them are in the past. If the present is built on the past and you extract and alter one stone in the foundation, what’s to say the whole thing won’t collapse?”
“What do you wish to change?”
“Why, the future, of course.”
“The future of mathematics?” he asked.
“Yes. Why not?”
A dozen strides later, she said, “Aristotle said time was the numeration of change and argued that time cannot exist, or has no meaning, without change. And, of course, the calculus is the study of change.”
“It is?”
“You still thought it was the study of rabbits?”
Thomas looked over and saw Harry was looking at him with a quirked eyebrow. He laughed, and then she did, too.
“You mock me, Harry, but I am in earnest.”
“Yes. Well, take comfort because Aristotle said that in addition to change, for time to exist there must be a soul to mark the change.”
“And?”
“And I will be the soul to mark your change.”
Thomas had been walking a few steps ahead of her. He stopped now and turned to her and thought of reaching for her, taking her hand.
But Harry had vaulted the stile and was racing across the meadow, back to Sommerleigh and luncheon. Thomas never caught up with her.
While Harry was up in her aerie in the evenings, Thomas spent his time poring over the calculus, praying he might master enough of it to impress his wife.
He had even swallowed his jealousy and imposed on Dr. Andrews several times, asking him for dinner on the nights Harry ate off a tray in her aerie and then trading smuggled Scottish whisky in the library for tutoring.
He found the doctor much easier to understand than Harry, but he would never tell her so. He told the doctor, however.
“Aye,” Dr. Andrews said with a grin, “that is because her thinking mechanism isnae in the same class as yers and mine. We are as peasants while she is a fearsome goddess with a mind apart. It must be painful for her to translate the genius of Newton and Leibniz so ye can understand it.”
Thomas held his head. “I think it is a great deal more painful for me.”
“Aye.” The doctor clapped him on his shoulder and got up to pour more whisky. “But it would be foolish to refuse a gift from a goddess, nae matter how many burdens it places on ye.”
Thomas groaned. “It’s like having Cleopatra as your laundress, scrubbing the shit stains out of your smalls.”
The doctor’s voice had an edge. “Marcus Antonius, is it then? Marcus, have ye ever wondered why Cleopatra might be willing to do so?”
Thomas opened his mouth and then closed it.
The doctor looked down into his glass. “Recognize yer luck, Thomas Drake.”
An invitation came for the Earl and Countess Drake to dine with the Dunbars.
“No,” Harry said.
They were at dinner in the dining room, eating the first of the spring asparagus.
Thomas protested. It would be rude to say no. They were so clearly free for the evening in question.
“You are free, I am not,” Harry said. She picked up her last stalk with her fingers.
Thomas was about to put his argument more strongly. She was his wife. She must accompany him.
Harry leaned forwards, her stalk of asparagus dangling from her fingers, and looked at him impassively, like a teacher not wanting to give away the right answer, waiting to see what he would say next.
He opened his mouth and, at the last possible moment, decided to say something else.
“You are absolutely correct.”
Harry sat back and put her tip of her stalk of asparagus in her mouth and bit down. Thomas suddenly felt he had passed a very important test.
On the night of the Dunbar dinner, Thomas took great care with his attire. Jackson was surprised to have his lordship ask about which waistcoats were clean and which breeches had been pressed.
Dressed in his finest, Thomas walked up the stairs to Harry’s aerie and tapped on the door.
He heard a grunt.
“I’m off to the Dunbars, Harry,” he said.
She said something through the door. He wasn’t sure, but it might have been Have fun.
He stomped down the stairs, feeling his care with his clothing had been a waste if she would not even open the door to see him.
He did have fun that night. He didn’t intend to, but he did.
The Dunbars were a convivial family, obviously loving, full of playful antics and laughter.
All the daughters—Faith, Hope, and Charity—played the pianoforte, and there were enough guests to make up the numbers for dancing after the dinner.
How wonderful to be surrounded by simple people like himself, ones who did not expect him to integrate and derivate.
Ones who knew how to laugh and sing and dance.
Who drank until their cheeks flushed. Who flirted and scolded and clucked and giggled.
Mrs. Dunbar expressed her regret early in the evening that Lady Drake had not been able to attend.
“I hope she is well,” she said.
“She is, thank you,” Thomas said. “Very well. She asked me to express her regrets many times over.” Harry hadn’t, of course, but Thomas knew the value of a social nicety.
“We are all so happy you have married, my lord,” Mrs. Dunbar said and her gaze rested momentarily on her daughter Hope as she spoke.
Later, Thomas waltzed with Hope Dunbar, and he was reminded of her beauty. Her red hair glinted most bewitchingly in the candlelight. She must be what? Twenty or so? He had a thought.
“You have met my nephew Phillip, have you not?”
She looked away. Was it his imagination or did she stiffen in his arms?
“Yes, my lord.”
“When he is home from university again, Lady Drake will invite you for tea. Or rather, I will. We two are so dull for poor Phillip, I am sure he would like to be around a lively young person like yourself.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said and turned her gaze on him.
When the dance was over, he wondered why he had seen fear in her eyes.
Thomas carried his boots in his hand as he walked down the corridor. When he passed Harry’s bedchamber, she opened the door and peered out.
“Thomas,” she said.
“Hello, Harry.”
“Was there fun to be had at the Dunbars tonight, my lord?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Harry stood in the doorway to her bedchamber.
She seemed to be waiting for something. Her hair was loose and wild, tendrils flying in all directions.
She was wearing a nightdress with a very intricate lace trim.
He thought he could see the shadows of her areolas under the delicate fabric.
It came to him that this was the nightdress she had worn on their wedding night.
“Tonight, I decided I have to prove there are an infinite number of auxiliary primes for each possible exponent.”
“Good.” He did not know what to say to his own wife. “Good night.”
She held out her arm and stopped him.
“You look handsome, Tommy.”
His heart was in his mouth. He waited for some other sign. None came.
“Good night,” she said and closed the door.
She thought him handsome.
She called him Tommy.
A faint itch in his heart. It felt like hope.